Study: Warming ocean changing fish territory
11/13/09 | 16 comments

Study: Warming ocean changing fish territory


Shifting temperatures drive species to new habitat
By Clarke Canfield
The Associated Press
AP FILE PHOTO
In this Jan 2007 file photo, the trawler Black Beauty leaves the Portland Fish Exchange, in Portland, Maine. A study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says rising water temperatures are helping drive many of New England's fish populations farther from shore and into deeper water.

PORTLAND, Maine — Fishermen have known for years that they’ve had to steam farther and farther from shore to find the cod, haddock and winter flounder that typically fill dinner plates in New England.

A new federal study documenting the warming waters of the North Atlantic confirms that they’re right — and that the typical meal eventually could change to the Atlantic croaker, red hake and summer flounder normally found to the south.

“Fishermen are businessmen, so if they have to go farther and deeper to catch the fish that we like to eat, eventually it won’t be economical to do that,” said Janet Nye, a fishery biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the lead author of the study.

“It just won’t be in your local seafood store, or maybe it’ll be more expensive,” said Nye, who works at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass. “So I think there’ll be a natural, hopefully slow, switch to different seafoods.”

For the study, which first appeared Oct. 30 in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, Nye and three other NOAA biologists analyzed water temperature trends from North Carolina to the Canadian border off Maine from 1968 to 2007. They then looked at fish survey data collected each spring and assessed where the fish were caught and how abundant they were.

The researchers looked at the familiar New England species as well as lesser-known fish such as longhorn sculpin and blackbelly rosefish.

Of the 36 stocks studied, the distribution range of 24 of them had changed in unison with the rising water temperatures that have been occurring off the Northeast since the 1970s.

That temperature rise doesn’t sound like much — less than half a degree Fahrenheit, on average — but it has been enough to cause fish to slowly move to areas with temperatures more to their liking.

The greatest movement was exhibited by the blackbelly rosefish, which moved more than 200 miles to the northeast during the years studied. Among commercial species, movements of more than 100 miles were observed for southern stocks of yellowtail flounder and red hake, as well as American shad and alewives.

Some fish exhibited little movement to the north, but rather moved to deeper waters where temperatures are lower, according to the report.

Small-boat fishermen on Cape Cod caught most of their haddock and flounder, as well as the peninsula’s namesake fish, in waters close to shore 20 years ago, said Tom Dempsey of the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association. Nowadays, they have to travel as far as 100 miles offshore to find those same fish, he said.

At the same time, he said, Massachusetts fishermen are catching more fish traditionally found in the Middle Atlantic — Atlantic croaker, in particular, usually caught off Virginia and North Carolina.

“How much of that is directly impacted by climate change is hard to get a handle on,” Dempsey said. “There are a number of other factors that have been at play, one being overharvesting in inshore areas and, subsequently, ecological changes as inshore areas have become dominated in a lot of areas by spiny dogfish populations.”

The study is one piece of the puzzle in figuring out the factors that influence ocean species, said Jason Link, an NOAA fisheries biologist and a co-author of the study. While the report says climate change is the driving factor, he said, other influences — such as fishing pressure and long-term natural cycles in ocean temperatures and atmospheric conditions — play a role.

“We’re looking at how much of this movement to colder waters is perhaps related to the environment as opposed to how much is due to fishing,” he said. “I don’t think this paper totally answers that question.”

While the report documents the movement of fish in the Northeast and the Middle Atlantic, there’s evidence to suggest that marine organisms in southern U.S. waters are also moving north, said Jay Odell, a marine specialist with The Nature Conservancy in Richmond, Va.

Sea turtles that normally nest on beaches in North Carolina and south have been nesting in Virginia and Maryland in recent years, he said, possibly because of rising water temperatures.

“One of the messages of this paper is that tracking why some fish are doing well and some aren’t, and why fish are moving, is a very complicated business,” Odell said.

AP FILE PHOTO

Flounder are displayed at the Portland Fish Exchange in November 2003. A study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says rising water temperatures are helping drive many of New England’s fish populations farther from shore and into deeper water.

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Comments
16 comments on this item
On 11/13/09 at 5:42 AM, leumas wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

This is the weekly AP global warming article. Where did you guys put the melting ice cube and polar bear pictures. Predominant offshore breezes bring up colder waters to the shoreline, onshore breezes bring warm surface waters to the shoreline. As the oceans HAVE NOT warmed one little bit yet, global warming is just someones wistful dream.

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On 11/13/09 at 8:54 AM, Gopher wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

On 11/13/09 at 5:42 AM, leumas wrote: Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

"... As the oceans HAVE NOT warmed one little bit yet, global warming is just someones wistful dream."

Data please.

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On 11/13/09 at 9:03 AM, Coolfusion wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

Oh sure.. if Bush can't be blamed.. then it must be global warming. It's getting boring to listen to.

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On 11/13/09 at 9:03 AM, hooligan wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

Warming water? Horse funk. The inshore waters are fished out. It stands to reason, you catch the easy fish first. When they're gone you go farther.

I am sick to death of this global warming nonsense.

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On 11/13/09 at 9:33 AM, Beelzebubba wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

Global warming is REAL! Al Gore said so.

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On 11/13/09 at 9:55 AM, hooligan wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

Where would we be today if al gore hadn't invented global warming and the Internet?

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On 11/13/09 at 10:28 AM, B_Godot wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

Jeesh, you guys are really funny. Where are they giving out the kayaks so I can go paddle 'DeNile?' That's okay though, because a lot of things exist whether or not anyone believes in them.

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On 11/13/09 at 11:45 AM, sapereaude wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

Global warming notwithstanding, the inshore stocks of demersals had been destroyed by a combination of overfishing, bottom habitat damage, and riparian and estuarine habitat toxicity long before global warming was an issue. In the Medieval Warm Period, Iceland exported cod. In the Little Ice Age, Iceland exported cod. Iceland continues to export cod to this day, largely because they have protected their fisheries from destructive corporate rapine (go look at the size of the salt cod for sale in Azorean supermarkets--it comes from Iceland). On the other hand, NOAA is charged with supervision of this country's marine resources, and should know from the records of their predecessors in the old US Fish Commission that the inshore demersals had already been decimated and were increasingly being replaced by wolf fish, ocean perch, etc. before 1960.

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On 11/13/09 at 12:08 PM, EJParsons wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

Mainers are going to be wishing for a little global warming come mid-January and February. And I'm waiting for the palm trees to start growing in my yard in Northern Florida. What a load of bunk.

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On 11/13/09 at 1:55 PM, ronfromdowneast wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

"Fishermen have known for years that they’ve had to steam farther and farther from shore".......

No wonder the fishermen are suffering. They need to trade those steam engines in for some deisel powered engines.

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On 11/13/09 at 2:02 PM, HRH419 wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

On 11/13/09 at 1:55 PM, ronfromdowneast wrote:

"Fishermen have known for years that they’ve had to steam farther and farther from shore".......

No wonder the fishermen are suffering. They need to trade those steam engines in for some deisel powered engines.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

This is exactly what I thought when I read this, ha,ha ! : )

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On 11/13/09 at 3:23 PM, hooligan wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

sapereaude

You said it much better, but that's been my understanding for years.

Ignorance, greed and a complete disregard for natural resources have caused the collapse of the fisheries.

Remember years ago when you heard, "if we don't stop now our children we be robbed of this precious resource." Well, the children are adults now and yes, we've been robbed.

We pretty much turned in our food resource diversity and traded it for cornfields in Iowa.

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On 11/13/09 at 3:31 PM, websmith wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

More government funded scientists issuing wild speculation supporting the government's desire to create reasons to take more in order to sustain its self. Naturally, the fish that would survive fishing activity would be located farther from shore and their predators. Also naturally, the number of predators will be reduced when they can't make the adjustment. There is nothing that has to be done about this except wait.

The thing that is upon us, that has to be acted on, is the contamination in all of our oceans from the runoff and waste from the plastics industry. Fish cannot escape this by moving further from shore and they don't know that they should. It collects hazardous chemicals and as unsuspecting fish eat it, it is carried back into our food chain. Rather than eliminating the culprits and forcing industry to replace products that are poisoning the entire human race, government's solution will be to tax us for plastic use as a trillion dollar industry donates to campaigns and operates the bureaucracies that issue regulations.

The solution is government reform and encouraging corporate land owners, who are being paid by taxpayers to grow nothing, to grow trees, pasture, and cotton that can be harvested and turned in plastic replacement products by green energy powered mills, cleaning the air and providing jobs in the process. http://ewebsmith.com/Gov/plasticsban.html

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On 11/13/09 at 7:54 PM, leumas wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

About 3 years ago, here in Jacksonville Florida, we had off shore breezes all summer long. The ocean temperatures at the beach were 15 degrees lower than usual. The fish didn't show up, and the tourists froze to death. Since then we have returned to onshore breezes and a comfy 85 degree surf and scads of fish!!! About ten years ago we had onshore breezes all winter long and the shrimp stayed in the river all winter long resulting in "Sequoia Shrimp" bigger than your Bulldog. Worldwide ocean temperatures are to the degree,exactly the same as they were 50 years ago.

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On 11/13/09 at 8:06 PM, leumas wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

Gopher: Ask Harold Bornes or George Denton @ the University of Maine Climate Change Institute. I work for the NGS, ACOE, DEP, and NASA. So ask someone from another agency.

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On 11/17/09 at 6:59 AM, marsexplorer wrote:         Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

The Cod are not to stupid, they couldnt afford to pay the high taxes Maine asseses, and said screw this place!

I live close to the shore, but not on it, I am hoping that the polar ice caps melt, then I should have ocean front property. If it floods New York City, Boston, LA and every other major coastal city, is that a bad thing?

It would most definetly get rid of lots of concentrated population, that presumably are the cause of the catastrophy warming.

And once they are gone, will the situaton reverse itself?

I was told an old story of a society that was corrupted, and perverse, that lived with disregard for the creation, and the creator, that save for one man and his family, where perished by a great flood of water. In that story the water recinded, and for a short time, all was good.

Perhaps the Creation, or the Creator has a way of balancing everything in all good time.

Well anyway, I have to go to the store and see if I can get a case of hairspray, and a hacksaw to remove my cattiletic convertor from my car. Hopefully if the place warms up, I wont have to put up any wood for the winter.

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